Domestic violence and a sickening message to a child: Phillip Morris

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Facebook post allegedly written by Ty’Rell Pounds shortly before he kidnapped and killed Skylar Williams last week is equally haunting and sickening. The message is a digital note from a homicidal coward and a loving father. Pounds knows that he is about to commit a monstrous crime and turn his 1-year-old son into an orphan.

“Kylo Pounds I love you so much. I hope you become a better man than I was when you turn 18,” reads the post in part.

“My dream goal was to raise you as a man and for me to become a state trooper. Obviously that didn’t happen!! … I’m so sorry that you have to grow up without us baby!! But we’ll be watching you trust me. I love you with all my heart Kylo.”

This past Monday, Pounds, 24, kidnapped Williams, 20, at gunpoint from the Mansfield campus of Ohio State University and headed south on Interstate 71. Roughly four hours later, he fatally shot his ex-girlfriend in a rural Kentucky as troopers closed in on him. He was then shot dead by a Kentucky State Trooper who cornered his vehicle.

Exactly one week earlier, a much different scene played out in the life of Pounds and his toddler son. That morning the young father visited with his son for two hours at the main branch of the Richland County library in downtown Mansfield. Their loving encounter seems to offer no precursor of the horrors that would shortly unfold.

It was a supervised visit that was unobtrusively observed by Cathy McGlone, who is the executive director of Bridges for Better Living, a business that offers parenting classes and works with couples locked in contentious custody disputes.

“The last time I saw them, it was clear to me how much the father loved his son. He held him on his lap and read to him. He sang songs to him. He hugged him.” McGlone told me in a phone interview Friday morning.

“This story has me physically and emotionally sick. The man I saw was very different than the man that’s been in the news for this awful crime. Now, I’m asking myself if I could have done anything differently.”

McGlone’s question is pertinent and frustrating. It comes with no obvious answers. What could she or officials from the Richland County Domestic Relations Court have done any differently? What could anyone have done?

Both Williams and Pounds wanted custody of their toddler. Each filed for and received restraining orders against the other. Family members knew of the growing animosity between the couple but were apparently limited in their ability to intervene. Indeed, in their final moments in life, neither of the couple remotely resembled a well-circulated photo showing them locked in a loving embrace during much happier times.

But, a question remains: How could Kylo have been spared the tragedy of being rendered an orphan?

McGlone has worked closely with troubled families and victims of domestic violence for nearly eight years. She said she often pulls on her own experiences when counseling victims of domestic violence.

“There’s always help out there if you’re willing to receive it. My sons and I left our home with just the clothes on our backs when my situation spiraled totally out of control. It was hard and frightening to leave, but with the help of churches, shelters, and sometimes complete strangers we found a way,” said McGlone.

“Young couples, especially, should know that there is always help available if they’re willing to reach out for it,” she added.

McGlone’s optimistic outlook is driven by her conviction that family unification is possible and that broken families can be fixed. Meanwhile, the unrelenting pattern of domestic violence continues, and the causalities mount unabated.

In his Facebook message to his son, Pounds wrote a stunningly selfish and ironic wish for his son: “I would like for you to become a state trooper – state of your choosing,” he wrote.

A far better wish for Ty’Rell Pounds would have been for courage not to become a coward and a killer. Here’s hoping that young Kylo eventually finds a way to champion oppressed women like Skylar Williams, the mother so cruelly stolen from him.